Everyone says, learn to Do-It-Yourself. It will save you time, it will save you money, it’s better for your health. Or does it?
To make pasta, I can choose to mix up a pasta dough, roll it out to over and over, cut it, dry it, store it. Or, I can choose to go into my pantry, pull out a box of pasta that I paid .99 for and cook it. Did I save time with the DIY verison? Nope. Did I save money? Maybe a little, but it was quickly outdone by the time I spent making it. Is it healthier? That depends. Does it taste better? Probably…but then again, I used a lot of time making it, and I’m not sure it would be worth the taste difference for an everyday meal.
The same could be said about any DIY project, whether it is food or a house project or a craft. The ‘savings’ is in the eye of the beholder.
Think About This
An important factor in DIY is that you have learned a process for yourself. You’ve mastered the technique of a process without the help of others. So, in learning HOW to make my own pasta, I’ve mastered a technique, I’ve become more self reliant in that I can make food for my family without relying on a store (and if you’re REALLY self-reliant, you’ve grown your own wheat – but you can trade or barter for that as well down the road, or you’ve learned about alternate flours and products that can make up a non-traditional pasta), I can make it to fit my family’s health needs, and have created something that probably tastes MUCH better than the store bought variety.
Why does this even matter?
If you are of the preparedness mindset, you can store and store and store and store. But to be TRULY prepared, you need to do more than store.
You need to learn the skills that can help save your life in case
your stores are not available.
So..if you’ve stored 3 years of yeast in your freezer, but power is no longer available, you’ve run out of gas for your generators and solar power is not available to you, that yeast may go bad. How will you make bread? You can rely on flat breads, yes. But if you’ve learned how to create your own sourdough starter, you can STILL make pancakes and bread and biscuits and many other recipes.
I see too many people talking about all the preparedness items they’ve stored for the next 30 years. They’re relying so heavily on those stores to see them through, that they aren’t thinking about the what-ifs.
- What if a tornado wipes you out in a post-disaster world. There’s no running to the store to stock back up. There’s no insurance company that’s going to pay you to restock.
- What if your goods go bad? Same issues…there’s no rescue at a store to help restock that product that has gone bad.
- What if you have to leave and you can’t take it with you?
So I encourage you to learn to Do It Yourself. You’ll have some failures. You’ll spend a little more money than you’ve anticipated. You might fail again. But the time that you get it right, and the time that you’ve realized you’ve mastered it….those are freeing moments in a lifestyle that is moving from simply being prepared to being self-reliant.
Now..go teach your kids to do the same thing!
Tom is a Marketing & Communications graduate interested in nature, gardening, agriculture, and traveling. For the last decade, Tom has turned his hobbies into a full-time job, creating useful resources and guides for all our readers. If he is not working on his next article, you will find Tom spending quality time with family or taking care of his own back garden.
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